Michael, Donna Marie, and I loved to pop in on Grandma when we were outside playing as kids. We’d tell her that we needed some of her “pink pills for pale people” as she referred to them. Do you remember those pink candies that were the color and the taste of “pepto-bismol”? Well, we loved them and Grandma never failed to treat us to them.

Photo from last summer of the house that Grandma lived in during her later years.

This is a really embarrassing one but very true. One afternoon I was crawling around on Grandma’s porch pretending I was a cow (as if I didn’t already have enough dealings with cows) and decided the wrought iron railing that surrounded her porch would make great “cow stalls” so I stuck my head between two of them. Well, you know what happened next–of course my head didn’t come back out as easily as it had gone in due to those things on the side of one’s head called ears. Grandma tried unsuccessfully numerous times to get my head out and then started to panic. She ran for mom who quickly came to my aid (with a “for Pete’s sake” look on her face). Mom applied some pressure to the bars and quickly freed my head. Grandma was greatly relieved, and I was permanently mortified and remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday.

As a child, I always loved Grandma’s flowers and was always asking her questions about them. She is the one that taught me the various names and instructed me on planting and watering them. Soon after, I had my own little flower bed and it’s still one of my favorite things to do in the spring and summer.

Grandma was an avid reader and she spent many hours on her porch glider with a book in hand and her bible always laid open on her kitchen table.

Grandma also loved to play jokes on us. One day she told me she could do something with her teeth that I couldn’t do with mine. Of course, I found this quite hard to believe so I asked her to show me. No sooner had I made the request than she grabbed hold of her dentures and pulled them out of her mouth and dangled them in front of my face. Needless to say, I was awe struck and horrified at the same time as I’d never known of the existence of dentures. I must have had quite the look on my face, as she laughed and laughed at my expression.

One April Fools Day she took an old newspaper from her basement and carefully glued all of the pages together and quietly placed it in our newspaper box. I can still hear Mom laughing when she tried to read the paper that day and it didn’t take her long to figure out who the prankster was.

One day Grandma arrived at our door with a box of candy–those boxes that have each piece of chocolate individually wrapped. It was actually an old candy box that still contained all of the wrappers. She placed black checkers in each wrapper and was quite pleased with the joke she played on me and my siblings.